Nationalism identity-markers

In the depoliticised atmosphere of Suharto s Indonesia, cultural competition occupied some of the space which the robust politics of the 1950s and 1960s had left vacant. For urban Bataks seeking their place in the Indonesian sun, this could not be represented by the village cultures from which they had escaped. New cultural simplifications had to be devised, sanitised and rendered attractive to serve their competition for a place in urban and national life. The tourist gaze sometimes helped clarify and justify the package of new identity-markers, but it was the Indonesian competition that defined them. 

It is in this state-averse world that my case studies are situated. Before embarking on them, however, I have some further Southeast Asian distinctions to make in the following chapter. This first discusses five particular markers which have served to consolidate and define identity in modern times. They have been the building blocks of the three types of nationalism, always present but assembled differently in each case. The chapter then makes a four-part distinction of the ways in which colonialism affected Southeast Asian political identities. 

A pronounced diasporic identity became clear only from the 1960s, in a New Order environment which made it not only acceptable but essential for each suku to proclaim a simplified short list of ethnic markers. Museums and theme parks have exhibited ethnic culture, the latter in particularly essentialised forms, while the push for tourist dollars has legitimated rituals, dress, music and house styles once denounced as primitive , un-Muslim, un-Christian and anti-national. Meanwhile the destruction of the Left removed the main pragmatic enemy of aristocratic and conservative culture, and the depoliticisation of national life shifted ethnic competition to cultural and economic domains (Kipp 1993 109-14 Pemberton 1994 152-81). 

The decade which followed these decisions was a very dark one for any who believed in a separate identity for KDs or for Christians in Sabah. Sustained by control of the timber concessions which had always dominated Sabah s money politics, and backed by Kuala Lumpur, Mustapha moved to suppress the key markers of KD identity. His policy for national unity was one language, one culture and one religion . Kadazan language was removed from all schools as they became part of the national system in the late 1960s, and the use of all languages other than... 

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